


future metropolis heart

by pyrophane



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Ambiguous Relationships, Complicated Emotional Entanglements, M/M, Memory Alteration, Minor Violence, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 14:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19443424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: “I don’t have dreams,” Jaemin says.Renjun looks at him. A chill, meditative evenness to his gaze. “Yes, you do,” he says. “You just don’t remember them.”





	future metropolis heart

**Author's Note:**

> not entirely sure what this fic is but it certainly exists now... i don't know why everything i write is about memory

Blessed are they who remember  
that what they now have they once longed for.

— _The River at Wolf,_ Jean Valentine

Renjun tried to kill Donghyuck this morning. Jaemin only caught the tail end of the fight, Donghyuck carefully winding an iridescent skein of magic—Renjun’s magic—around his wrist, guards flooding into the room. Divested of his powers Renjun is too slight to dispatch an entire fleet of security guards by himself, though he certainly gives it his best shot, and in the end he’s dragged out unconscious. 

“Again?” Jaemin says, crossing his arms and leaning back against the doorframe. “What’s that, the third time this month? Injunnie’s persistent, I’ll give him that, but _seriously_?”

Donghyuck hoists himself up onto the desk, heedless of the papers fluttering to the floor. He waves a hand imperiously. “I lost count. It’s just his way of showing he cares, you know. We’re basically best friends.”

“Most people stick to flowers and not assassination attempts,” Jaemin says. “Why do you even keep him around? Sure, his power’s useful, but there are plenty of people with useful powers who don’t try to murder you twice a week.” 

“There isn’t anyone like Renjun,” Donghyuck says. Renjun’s magic glitters fitfully at his wrist like a circlet of fish scales. “And I can handle him. Keeps things fun and fresh!” 

“I don’t see how that’s _handling_ him,” Jaemin says.

“There’s plenty of things you don’t see,” Donghyuck says.

Jaemin sighs. “You shouldn’t have sent for the guards,” he says, even though he knows Donghyuck had no choice in the matter. The guards would have come anyway. He’s too valuable to NEO, has been with the organisation the longest out of them all. His compulsion magic is as uncommon as it is powerful, slow seep of honeyed words into the mind. He brought Jaemin in, he brought Renjun in, and before that he brought Jeno in, though Jeno didn’t stay. “You have me.”

Donghyuck presses his hands to his chest in mock surprise. “I do? My hero.”

“If you’re planning to swoon I’m not going to catch you.”

“Yes, you are,” Donghyuck says, swinging his legs. “You always do.”

“Don’t test your luck,” Jaemin says, but he steps forward anyway. Donghyuck’s answering grin is magnetic; Jaemin’s heart jolts like a compass needle. 

When he’s standing in front of Donghyuck, Donghyuck hooks a finger through one of his belt loops, tugging him closer. Jaemin tilts Donghyuck’s face upwards with a hand at his jaw. The escalation of physicality is like second nature, action, reaction. By extension there must have been a catalyst at some point, long ago, but Jaemin can’t remember. Things have always been like this. Things will always be like this.

“Maybe you should rethink going out in the field alone with Renjun,” Jaemin says. “At least take me with you.”

Donghyuck puckers his lips. “You worry too much,” he says. “Renjun’s a professional, he’d never try anything while we’re out on a mission. We’re actually a really great team! Anyway, I can take care of myself.” He waves his wrist. Grins. “He takes one step out of line and his magic’s gone. He knows that.”

“It’s hard _not_ to worry when our lovely third teammate has made his murderous intent so clear,” Jaemin says. “You don’t need magic to hurt someone.”

The smile on Donghyuck’s face capsizes. “I guess you’re right,” he says. He’s right in front of Jaemin, but all of a sudden Jaemin’s skin crawls with the awareness of distance. Donghyuck frowns, grabs his hand, and the pressure eases.

“Where did you go just then?” Jaemin murmurs.

Donghyuck’s fingers are cold. Jaemin runs his thumb over the back of Donghyuck’s hand.

“Nowhere,” Donghyuck answers, guileless. “I’m right here.”

For all his various other personal failings, Renjun has at least never tried to kill Jaemin, so their rooming arrangement hasn’t been updated since Renjun arrived at NEO. His reputation as _Kestrel_ fell ahead of him like a shadow, though high profile was probably the last thing an assassin wanted to be. Too much of a loose, infamous cannon to leave to his own devices, this boy with powers to unmake, splitting concrete or steel or bodies apart like overripe fruit with the twist of a wrist. The CCTV footage of Renjun’s work came off more like a slightly grainy slasher film than security camera recordings; Jaemin was impressed, despite himself. 

When Renjun walked into Jaemin’s formerly single-person room at the NEO facility his eyebrows climbed into his fringe. It was clear he’d expected a solitary consignment. _Surprised they put us in the same room,_ Renjun said conversationally. _Guess nobody was concerned about the possibility of one of us trying to murder the other while they slept?_

 _I’m not asleep,_ Jaemin said, _and neither are you._

 _You couldn’t kill me, anyway_ , Renjun said.

That nettled Jaemin’s pride, but he had no plans of letting it show. _You might be surprised,_ was all he said. 

They didn’t talk much, the first few months. Certainly not enough for friendship. But there’s always been something admirable about Renjun’s meticulously curated self-sufficiency, and admiration is easy enough to afford when it’s shallow. And Donghyuck’s right: Renjun is a professional, which is why, against every instinct, Jaemin trusts Renjun with his life and absolutely nothing else. They’ve been on too many paired assignments otherwise, Renjun’s light voice in his ears as Jaemin covers the exits while Renjun moves in close-range. More than once Renjun’s dragged him back from the brink of death, flow of magic reversed to stitch flesh together instead of rending it apart, with a furious, grim resolve Jaemin could almost mistake for care.

Donghyuck goes when the job needs finesse, sweet-talking, anything at a delicate stage of operation. Renjun goes when a message needs to be sent, doesn’t leave until he’s crushed everything into fine-grained bloodied rubble. Donghyuck is the chisel, Renjun the hammer. And Jaemin? He’s whatever he needs to be. 

Jaemin wakes up just before dawn. Renjun is back in their room, so he’s clearly suffered no lasting sanctions for his actions. Through Jaemin’s second sight his body is delineated in silver—Donghyuck must have returned his magic to him. He’s sitting on his bed with his back to the wall, knees drawn up to his chest, slow trickle of greyish light through the curtains softening him around the edges. He looks his age. It unsettles Jaemin. 

“What did you dream about?” Renjun asks.

“I don’t have dreams,” Jaemin says.

Renjun looks at him. A chill, meditative evenness to his gaze. “Yes, you do,” he says. “You just don’t remember them.”

NEO, whose area of commercial interest primarily comprises high-end contract killings and spy work, does not exactly lack for monetary funds, but Renjun insists on fiscally conservative practices that mostly result in their team taking public transport to and from their hits. So six in the evening finds Jaemin and Renjun on the subway in a mostly-empty carriage, en route to a company function where they’ll be disposing of some poor mid-tier sucker who skimmed money one too many times from his boss. That’s the reason on file, anyway. Jaemin finds it hard to believe that embezzlement, however flagrant, is enough to warrant hiring a superpowered assassin team to address, let alone specifically requesting _Kestrel_ by name, but it isn’t his job to ask questions. 

“So how would you do it?” 

“Do what?”

“If you had to kill me,” Jaemin clarifies. “How would you do it?”

“Stop fucking around,” Renjun says exasperatedly. “We have a job to do.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it,” Jaemin presses. “You try to kill Donghyuck three times a day.”

“You shouldn’t expect me to treat you and Donghyuck the same way,” Renjun says. The words have a conversation-killing finality to them, and Jaemin pulls an exaggerated face at Renjun, who bats it away.

Things hadn’t been like this when Jeno was his field partner. He misses Jeno. It’s a vague, fleeting ache, hollowed out in the middle, pressing light fingertips against the chambers of his heart from the inside. Almost experimental, as though he’s forgotten what it feels like to hurt. Sometimes he thinks the pain should be stronger than it is, fades too quickly for the magnitude he’d expected—but there’s nothing to mourn, no reason to expect it to be anything more than what it is. 

“How do you fuck up badly enough at your job for your boss to send the Kestrel after you,” Jaemin muses.

Renjun snorts. “Maybe these people are big on deterrence,” he says. “Invest once in me to make an example out of this guy, and they’ll never have a problem with blue-collar crime again.”

“Drastic measures,” Jaemin says.

“Either way, we’re getting paid,” Renjun says.

The kill is so easy it’s boring. Jaemin doesn’t need any supernatural weight to his words in order to charm his way into the function, and from there all he has to do is cover Renjun’s back as Renjun slips through the crowd towards the mark and cleaves his torso into three pieces. In and out before the screaming even starts. 

Renjun’s control over his magic is faultless. There isn’t a single drop of blood on him, anywhere. They head back to the station and settle in for the long ride back. Outside the carriage windows, the fluorescent underground lights leave bright white streaks in Jaemin’s vision.

“I wouldn’t use my magic,” Renjun says abruptly.

Jaemin twists back to look at him. “Hm?”

Renjun scowls. “If I had to kill you,” he says. “I’d use my hands. I’d snap your neck.”

“I’m flattered,” Jaemin says, grinning. “Have you done it before?”

“Just once,” Renjun says, and briefly he looks so sad that the rest of what Jaemin was going to say turns to dust in his mouth. “I held him while he died. It was very quiet. You wouldn’t be quiet, though. You wouldn’t go quietly.”

“... Thanks, I think,” Jaemin says. There’s a dizziness a little like motion sickness rising past his ears. “I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me up when it’s our stop?”

Renjun shrugs, noncommittal, and turns his head to watch the tunnels past the window, or study his reflection. It’s as good an agreement as any, so Jaemin closes his eyes and does his best to will away the nausea building up just past the roof of his mouth.

He doesn’t realise he’s actually fallen asleep until Renjun’s shaking him awake, and consciousness snaps on all at once. “We’re here,” Renjun says, soft, unnecessary, the train already coming to rest at the platform.

They disembark in silence. It’s a warm night, sparkling with dregs of leftover adrenaline Jaemin hadn’t managed to sleep off. Around them, people move in and out of the station briskly, intent on reaching other destinations.

Then Renjun speaks. “Who’s Jisung?”

Renjun’s looking at him with an expectant light to his face, but the name doesn’t ring any bells no matter how far back Jaemin tries to sift through his memory. “Who?”

“How am I supposed to know? You’re the one who was saying his name in your sleep.”

“I don’t know anyone called Jisung.”

“Yeah?” Renjun challenges, but he doesn’t sound at all triumphant. “Then why are you crying?”

Jaemin touches his fingers to his cheek and, absurdly, finds them wet. He lowers his hands, stares at the collected moisture. “I’m—” 

“You _do_ know him,” Renjun insists. His voice takes on a strange, pointed urgency. He’s stopped walking, just outside the station exit, and Jaemin stops too. “Promise you’ll remember this. Jisung. Today, I asked you about Jisung.” 

His confusion solidifies, grows roots. He blinks, waiting for his vision to return to normal. Rubs at the tears on his fingertips. “Sure, okay,” Jaemin says slowly. “I’ll remember it.”

It seems to satisfy Renjun, the tense set to his shoulders easing. “You’re wrong, you know,” Renjun says. It’s a bad habit of his, continuing past conversations without indication or context, leaving Jaemin to puzzle through just what he’s supposed to be responding to.

“About what?”

“Everything,” Renjun says, and refuses to elaborate any further.

Half of an overheard conversation, months ago:

“You could just take my magic away forever,” Renjun said. He sounded exhausted, blackly miserable. A thinness to his voice that Jaemin’d never heard from him. “I don’t understand why you don’t.” 

Jaemin was asleep, or supposed to be, in a bed at the facility’s medical centre. He kept his breathing slow and even, his heart rate low, a tiny pinch of magic to smooth his vitals out. If either Donghyuck or Renjun had been watching, they’d be able to tell the difference, but their attention was on each other and not Jaemin.

“It’d kill you,” Donghyuck said.

“You’d only be returning the favour. Haven’t I tried to kill you enough times?”

“Do you _want_ me to?”

“No,” Renjun said. “Yes. I don’t…”

“I’m not gonna let you martyr yourself on me,” Donghyuck said firmly. “Renjun—”

“Stop it,” Renjun said. The words thick with tears. “You sound just like him.” 

There was a slow pulse of silence. “You don’t have to keep remembering,” Donghyuck said, then, more kindly. “You can let go. Just ask and I’ll—”

“If I let go I have nothing left,” Renjun said. “I’m not Jaemin. I need to remember. I owe it.” 

“You don’t owe anything. You need to stop thinking about everything as a debt. If it hurts, just cut it free. It doesn’t have to be any harder than that.” 

“Then you shouldn’t have brought me in,” Renjun said. “You should have let me—”

The pneumatic hiss of the automatic doors sliding open cut him off. Jaemin still turns that snippet of conversation over in his mind sometimes, trying to sieve out some sort of understanding. But it’s like reconstructing a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing, or fitting a key to the right lock out of a hundred. In the end the answer is entirely out of his grasp.

This time the mark is a Zhong Chenle, heir to a media empire with not-so-secret ties to criminal superpowers, in more than one sense of the word. He’s attending some second cousin’s wedding and they’ll be crashing the reception. It’s just a recon mission, so Jaemin’s not sure why he’s been partnered with Renjun for this one. Renjun’s magic is ill-suited to subtlety, far too distinctive in its consequences—hard not to know the Kestrel’s come to visit when there’s a trail of pulped bodies leading out of the wreckage. Maybe NEO’s expecting things to turn ugly. Maybe the tedium of observation is meant to be a slap on the wrist for Renjun, whose sullen expression indicates exactly what he thinks of that. 

They take the bus. Renjun blows on the window, carefully uses the tip of his finger to draw a flower in the bloom of condensation: petals, stem, leaf. Then he swipes his sleeve across the glass, leaving no trace of the moment of whimsy. Jaemin averts his eyes.

Essentially, they’ve been tasked with babysitting Chenle, keeping eyes on what he does and who he talks to. An easy job, but Jaemin shouldn’t complain. He’s going into the lion’s den alone with Renjun on surveillance duty, because Renjun’s face will no doubt be known to some of the guests—another reason Jaemin can’t understand the mission delegation. Donghyuck’s skillset would have been a perfect fit for the job. 

Renjun sets up the surveillance station upstairs while Jaemin changes into a server uniform. A loose semicircle of collapsible white fabric screens, and Jaemin presses his palms to each one in turn, gold light rippling outwards from the point of contact and resolving into the world through his eyes. He’s careful not to look directly at the screens, to save himself the disorientation. The bride and groom are already seated; Chenle himself hasn’t arrived yet. 

It isn’t relevant to the mission whether the marriage was for money or for love. Jaemin can’t help the curiosity anyway. On the screens, the newlyweds look happy enough, but anyone can smile for the cameras. 

“Do you think you’ll ever get married?” Jaemin says.

“With what time,” Renjun says flatly. “And to who.”

“Right, you’re married to the job,” Jaemin says, sighing. He can’t keep the wistfulness out of his voice, but if Renjun notices, he doesn’t point it out.

It must take an extraordinary depth of love to want to live out the rest of your years with someone else. Sometimes he feels so hollow he wonders if he’s even capable of it. The loving, or the living. He always wants to give more than he has. There’s no point wishing for another life, because it wouldn’t be him anymore, only a stranger with his name. Still—to be the kind of person who could freely make that sort of commitment. Face to the wind, eyes open, heart in his hands. It’s always the same person. If he had dreams, they would all be about the same person.

What does the world look like when you’re in love? A little like this world.

“I know you and Donghyuck have whatever going on,” Renjun says, “but some of us are into gainful employment and job security.”

“Aww, are you worried about third-wheeling,” Jaemin coos. It could never be that easy, but the illusion’s nice, regardless. “Do you ever feel like a third wheel, Injunnie?”

“Do you want me to say yes? Then no,” Renjun says. He reaches behind Jaemin’s ear and clicks the comm in his earring on. “The party’s starting. Time to make your entrance.”

Waitstaff are basically invisible at functions, which makes it the perfect cover role. All Jaemin has to do is hold a bottle of wine and smile and circle the room. Bolstered with a little bit of magical projection, nobody will look at him twice, not even to flag him down.

Most of the way through the evening, a latecomer arrives. Chenle lights up and waves him over—it’s the first real interest he’s shown in any of the guests, so Jaemin drifts a little closer. “Who’s the new kid?” Jaemin asks.

“I didn’t catch his face when he came in. Can you get a closer look?” Renjun says. 

From the back, all Jaemin can make out is that he’s tall and skinny, and that his suit jacket isn’t tailored to his frame at all. Chenle grasps his elbow, beaming, and steers him to a seat. The boy ducks his head, runs a hand through his hair, glances up, finally looking in Jaemin’s direction, and he’s—and he’s— 

Jaemin’s vision blurs, fracturing apart and recombining like he’s looking through prisms and he can’t get enough breath, smoke flooding his mouth. Someone’s driving a wedge into his temple, splitting his head open. 

“Jaemin?” Renjun’s voice crackles with impatience over the comms.

Does he know him? Trying to get a better look at the boy stabs his eyes out, gaze glancing off his face like a rock skipping on water. Jaemin’s head pulses. “The boy with Chenle, can you see him—fuck, my head—”

Renjun swears. “ _Nana_ ,” he hisses, and it’s like Jaemin’s jolted awake, the world flashing into icy clarity. The boy hasn’t seen him yet. _It’s me_ , he finds himself thinking, wild, helpless. _Look at me—_

“What did you say,” Jaemin says, digging the heel of his palm into the side of his head. “What did you—” 

“We’re done here,” Renjun says tightly. “We’re heading back _now._ Get out of there, you’re starting to draw attention.”

Jaemin ducks into the corridor leading to the kitchen. “The mission—”

“We’ve got more than enough data. We need to go.”

Between the two of them, the surveillance setup disassembly is complete in less than a minute. A burst of magic from Jaemin’s fingertips, and the room restores itself to precisely the way it was before they arrived, not a speck of dust out of place. Already the headache sledgehammering at the inside of Jaemin’s skull has faded, leaving a dull floating sensation, something small struggling to surface for air. 

He clears his throat. “Do you know who that boy is?”

The line of Renjun’s mouth pulls taut. “Yes,” he says. “He has powers.” 

“The files said every guest at that wedding would be a civilian.” 

“That’s why I pulled you out,” Renjun says. “We aren’t equipped for confrontation—this was just supposed to be recon—” 

“You called me _Nana_ ,” Jaemin says quietly. “That’s—only Jeno ever called me that.”

Renjun freezes. “I didn’t,” he says.

Renjun’s a terrible liar. The honesty comes as a compulsion to him. This long, in their line of work, and he still hasn’t gotten any better. 

“I didn’t know you knew Jeno,” Jaemin says.

“I don’t,” Renjun says. “Jaemin, _drop it._ ”

The undercurrent to the words is close to fear. Jaemin drops it.

As soon as they arrive back at the facility Renjun storms into Donghyuck’s room, Jaemin trailing behind him at a more sedate pace. “Why weren’t we told Zhong Chenle had superpowered bodyguard detail?” Renjun snaps, in lieu of a greeting. “We weren’t prepared at all. Things could have gone really fucking wrong.”

 _Superpowered bodyguard detail?_ That’s a rather a liberal interpretation of the facts. But Donghyuck blanches. “He doesn’t,” he says. “He shouldn’t. It wasn’t in the file.”

“Lucky I knew him. Huang Minghao,” Renjun says. “Teleportation powers, I’ve fought him before, he’s good enough to still be alive.”

“Fuck—Huang Minghao, as in _Justin_?” Renjun nods, terse. “He just contracted with NEXT, there’s no reason for him to be—unless there’s a personal connection there. But there’s no record of that, either.

“Charge the client a penalty fee,” Renjun says. “The risk level—if we’d known, NEO would have assigned the mission to one of the hyung teams.” 

“I’ll raise it with Taeyong-hyung,” Donghyuck says. He looks at Jaemin. His fingers flutter, an aborted movement. Jaemin thinks, briefly, about rings. “But you’re not—neither of you got hurt?”

“Not a scratch,” Jaemin says. He holds his breath, but Renjun doesn’t say a word about his reaction to the boy, when he’d seen him. Renjun’s lying, Jaemin’s almost sure of it, and not just by omission.

Afterwards, Jaemin searches NEO’s records for _Huang Minghao,_ finds an old CCTV clip of a boy blinking in and out of the frame outside a burning shopfront. He’s tall and skinny, but even from a pixellated distance Jaemin can tell he isn’t the boy he’d seen. So Renjun really had lied for him. Jaemin just can’t understand _why._

Jaemin surveys the wreckage of Donghyuck’s room. The curtain bar knocked askew, chairs overturned, files scattered and shredded over the floor. “Injunnie isn’t pulling his punches, is he,” he says. 

Donghyuck sighs, prolonged and dramatic. “He’s madder than usual. Off the Zhong Chenle thing,” he says. 

“Has he even told you what his problem is?”

“He just has this thing—this, like, emotional masochism thing or whatever,” Donghyuck says thoughtfully. “Like a little kid picking at scabs. He makes himself relive it over and over. It’s going to destroy him one day. I think that’s what he wants. That’s why he keeps trying to kill me, and why I keep letting him try.” 

“Oh,” Jaemin says. Renjun like a bird hurling itself into a glass window, chasing an indistinct reflection, smudges of light. “Then—what’s he reliving?”

“I don’t know,” Donghyuck says. “You’ll have to ask him.”

Something about the light shifts, angle of the sun outside, and Jaemin’s breath catches, because he’s seen this precise scene before. Déjà vu so intense it blinds him for a second. Ruin of a room, Donghyuck in the middle of it all, but there was, should be someone else—

Vertigo spiders up his throat, halfway to nausea. His vision honeycombs, renders the world in triplicate. He stumbles backwards, catches himself on the doorframe. 

Uncertainly, Donghyuck says, “Jaemin? Are you—” 

“I need to lie down,” Jaemin says, and his voice doesn’t sound his own at all. Donghyuck reaches towards him and he jerks away. “Don’t touch me,” he says. Hurt flashes across Donghyuck’s face, but the guilt is swallowed up by lightheadedness. 

“Nana—”

“Don’t call me that,” Jaemin hisses. His head sloshes. The shelves above the desk are rattling, straining against their bolts. “You aren’t—where’s Jeno? This is Jeno’s room, why isn’t he here?”

“Jeno left, remember?” Donghyuck’s voice is edged with something Jaemin’s too disoriented to place. “Jeno walked out—”

“Jeno _wouldn’t_ , Jeno would never—you expect me to believe NEO would let anyone go that easily—” 

“Jaemin—” 

“What did you do to me?” Jaemin snarls. One by one, the tiny circular lights recessed into the ceiling overhead explode, showering glass onto the floor. “My head, it’s like a fucking sieve, I’m—” A fresh wave of dizziness sears behind his eyes. “I shouldn’t be here, I’m not—why can’t I remember when I arrived? Why can’t I—” 

In the wrong light, love tastes a lot like resentment. Donghyuck’s face swims in front of him like an apparition. Then, like a switch kicked, there’s no more light at all.

Lately Renjun’s an uneasy sleeper. Jaemin’s been struck by a bout of insomnia, harsher iteration of the same, and all night he can hear Renjun tossing and turning in his bed. He cries out sometimes, in different languages, though never a name Jaemin can discern. 

Neither of them can stand the dark, so the curtains always stay open to let the moon in. Jaemin’s given up on trying for unconsciousness so he figures he might as well capitalise on the idle time to reread some of their upcoming mission files. Then the back of his neck prickles, unmistakeable sense of being watched. When he turns around Renjun’s sitting up, eyes fixed on Jaemin. His gaze is distressingly lucid, the sheets puddled around his waist. In the moonlight his skin looks almost blue.

“You’re dead,” Renjun says. An open sort of wonder to his voice. “I killed you.”

Jaemin blinks. “I’m… right here?”

But whoever Renjun is talking to, it isn’t Jaemin. “Were you proud of me?” he asks, almost childish. “I thought you didn’t think I could do it, but you didn’t even look surprised, at the end. Maybe it was just me who didn’t think I could do it.”

“Who?” Jaemin says softly. “Who did you kill?”

Renjun gives no indication of having heard him. “I miss you,” he says. “You told me not to, but I still do. I outgrew you and I wish I didn’t. I wish we could go back. I wish we could—” His breath hitches, too loud in the deadening midnight quiet. 

“Renjun,” Jaemin says, unnerved for reasons he can’t articulate. “Go to sleep.”

He doesn’t protest. Lies down again, obedient in a way he would never be awake, or at least not with either Jaemin or Donghyuck. Within moments his breathing eases, evens out. Jaemin has no such luck, and by the time the sun rises he still hasn’t found his way to sleep, but it’s a new day, anyway, the record swept blank. He won’t ask, when Renjun wakes up, because Renjun won’t answer. This is the only way they know how to live with one another. 

Late afternoon. Light streaming in over the top of the curtains Donghyuck keeps forgetting to fix, throwing long bars of white onto the sheets. Jaemin lifts a hand into the path of the light, watching how the skin turns rosy and translucent around the bones of his fingers.

A rustle. Donghyuck hums, sitting up. “What are you thinking about?”

“You,” Jaemin says. 

“Everyone should always be thinking about me,” Donghyuck agrees. 

Jaemin studies his hands. Then he drops his chin onto Donghyuck’s shoulder. “Say we leave NEO, ten years from now,” he says. “What do you think you’d be?”

“You’re planning to leave NEO?”

“I don’t know,” Jaemin says. “Are you planning to stay here forever?”

Donghyuck shifts to better accommodate Jaemin’s weight, drums his fingers on his knee. “I’ve been here since I was born,” he says, and makes a face. “Okay, when I say it like that… maybe you’re right and I do need a retirement plan. Ugh, I’ll be so old, I don’t even want to think about it. My life will practically be over by then, is there even any point?”

“You won’t even be thirty. That is _not_ old. I’m sure being teenage mutant contract killers has given us plenty of transferable skills.”

“A statement approved by Renjun,” Donghyuck declares. 

“Hey, we know how to use public transport and everything,” Jaemin says easily.

“Then you tell me,” Donghyuck says. Jaemin straightens up. “Ten years from now, the post-NEO era. What do you think you’ll be?”

Donghyuck’s gaze is keen. Incisive in its candour. The unspoken assumption that they’ll both still be alive hangs heavy between them before it too goes gauzy around the edges, in the deluge of light.

Jaemin says, “In love.”

“Things weren’t always like this,” Renjun says. “It used to be… when there were still five of us. We were…” 

“There’s never been five of us,” Jaemin says. The words leave a metallic aftertaste behind his teeth. “Not even altogether. You, me, Donghyuck, Jeno. But Jeno left before you came.” Every now and again Jaemin does a search through NEO’s CCTV archives to see if Jeno’s turned up anywhere, but it’s as if Jeno vanished into smoke the moment he left. Jaemin’s ribs ache, a sympathetic pain.

“Really? My bad,” Renjun says, not sounding the least bit fazed.

“You’re a terrible secret-keeper, you know,” Jaemin says. 

“It doesn’t matter what I say to you,” Renjun says, “because you won’t remember it anyway.”

Apparently Jaemin’s been forgetting a lot of things, these days. “But it matters to _you_ ,” he says. “You wouldn’t keep bringing it up if it didn’t.”

It startles a laugh out of Renjun. “I forgot you think the distinction’s important.”

“I don’t,” Jaemin says. “But you do.”

Renjun’s quiet for a while. “I’m not trying to kill Donghyuck,” he says. “Not really.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“He owes me,” Renjun says. “You don’t get it. Donghyuck—you don’t know what his powers are really like.”

“So explain it to me,” Jaemin says. “I won’t remember it anyway, isn’t that what you just said? Doesn’t that make me the perfect listener?”

“That’s not the same thing at all,” Renjun says. But he leans forward. “The mission last month, with the guy who was stealing from his boss—do you remember what I said to you, on the train ride back?”

“Didn’t I sleep the entire time,” Jaemin says, frowning. “What does that have to do with anything?”

Face falling, Renjun sits back. “You don’t remember,” he says bitterly. “Of course you don’t remember. What did I expect. He remade you so perfectly.”

It’s impossible not to feel injured, though Jaemin has no idea why it’s even warranted. “What do you mean?”

“It’s his duty to his creation. Remember that you asked for this,” Renjun says. “You chose this, I didn’t. I won’t let go—”

“You aren’t making any sense,” Jaemin says. The beginnings of a migraine dance around the crown of his head. “Just tell me this. If you’re so unhappy here, why do you stay?”

Renjun smiles. There’s nothing gentle about the expression at all. “Love,” he says. 

“Do you regret it?” Donghyuck asks. He’s lying starfished on his back on top of Jaemin’s bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, exhaustion darkening his eyes. Donghyuck’s rarely in the facility these days, keeps getting called out on missions with other NEO teams, and the constant grinding mill of work is starting to take a visible toll on him. 

Jaemin wants to set a hand to Donghyuck’s shoulder, or the plane of his stomach, the old physical comfort, but something tells him to hold back. “Regret what?” Jaemin asks.

“Joining NEO,” Donghyuck says, like it’d even been a choice. He’d had nothing. And then there was Donghyuck.

With a careful lightness, Jaemin says, “It’s not like I’d know the difference if you made me, anyway,” and watches for Donghyuck’s response. 

Donghyuck doesn’t flinch at all, but there’s something a little raw about his expression as he sits up and turns to face Jaemin. “Would you resent me?” Donghyuck asks. “If I did?”

“Well, did you?”

“Of course not,” Donghyuck says, face twisting. “You—I wouldn’t ever do that to you.” 

“Then there’s no point talking through something that never happened,” Jaemin says.

Donghyuck is a brilliant liar, and so is Jaemin. He has no option other than trust. Maybe it’s foolish of him, but Donghyuck deserves it. Deserves faith. Deserves love without reservation. 

He walks over to the bed, lowers himself onto the edge. Shifting backwards, Donghyuck puts his palm to Jaemin’s shoulder and pushes him down. His back hits the mattress. Donghyuck’s face hovers over his, filling his entire field of vision.

“My head hurts,” Jaemin says.

Donghyuck touches Jaemin’s temple with the tips of his fingers. Almost immediately the ache lessens, then disappears altogether. Jaemin reaches up, closes his hand around Donghyuck’s wrist. His fingers are cold and Donghyuck’s skin is warm over the pulse. Soon he can’t feel the difference at all.

A guard steers Renjun out by the elbow, a relatively violence-free end to today’s attempt on Donghyuck’s life. When Renjun catches sight of Jaemin the change that comes over his face is unreadable. No—that isn’t true. It’s _desperation_ , the kind Jaemin thought Renjun would never let anyone else see. Transforms him into a stranger. Jaemin opens his mouth, but his voice dies premature at the back of his throat. 

“Jisung,” Renjun calls out, voice like a bell. “Who is Jisung?” and Jaemin’s struck by the fear that it isn’t the first time he’s asked.

Casually, deliberately, Jaemin steps into Renjun’s path, blocking him off. 

“Move,” Renjun says, low and tightly furious. A miasma of dark smoke crackles and gathers around his hands. “This is between me and Donghyuck.”

“No,” Jaemin says. There’s the familiar rush of warmth as magic rushes to his fingertips in preparation for release, process easy as a heartbeat. In the end it’s the only thing he knows for sure. “It’s never been just you two. Don’t you get it? If it involves Donghyuck, it involves me. If it involves you, it involves me. We’re all we have left.”

“Jaemin,” Donghyuck warns, somewhere behind Jaemin.

“Don’t _you_ get it,” Renjun parrots. “When I have nothing left then I’ll finally—” He breaks off, shaking his head like he’s trying to reorient himself. 

Jaemin doesn’t usually do defensive magic, but he can be whatever he needs to be. He flings up a translucent golden barrier just as Renjun looses the first bolt of energy at him. At first the smoke deflects off the shield, but Renjun’s relentless, pushes forward, catches the edge of Jaemin’s hand like a razor. Jaemin’s knuckles split open. Blood wells up like rings before Jaemin staunches the flow with a second skin of magic, shock engulfing the bright flare of pain. He stares at the blood, then at Renjun. Renjun’s _serious._ He hadn’t really believed it until now but the proof’s irrefutable, dripping down the backs of his fingers.

Renjun doesn’t give him space to breathe. Jaemin hates being forced onto the back foot, but all he can do is react, defend, hold the onslaught of Renjun’s magic off a little longer, bandages of gold light wrapping around Renjun’s hands to cut his powers off. His breath comes in shallow scrapes, barely enough to keep him upright. Renjun smashes the cages of Jaemin’s magic with a burst of silver, fists clenched. Rears back, and then Donghyuck screams out, sharp, “ _Mark Lee,_ ” and the vicious light behind Renjun’s eyes cuts off like a power outage and he crumples to the ground.

For a while there’s only silence, pierced through with the rush of Jaemin’s pulse in his ears as he’s looking down at Renjun’s unconscious form pooled at his feet like a pile of spare parts. Slowly, he turns around. Donghyuck’s face is pale, eyes huge, hands clenched into fists at his sides. His breath comes unevenly. Jaemin steps towards him. He’s never been afraid of Donghyuck, and Donghyuck’s never been afraid of him, or anyone else, but the way Donghyuck’s looking at him now, a blank, abstracted terror shaking through him, is close to unbearable. 

When Jaemin reaches Donghyuck he closes his hands over Donghyuck’s fists and gently eases them open. Waits for the unwanted, unfamiliar cast to Donghyuck’s eyes to subside. 

“He was going to kill you,” Donghyuck says, barely louder than a whisper. Palms pressed to Jaemin’s. “I had to—he was going to kill you.”

“He wouldn’t have,” Jaemin says, though he isn’t sure if that’s the truth. Maybe he doesn’t know Renjun as well as he thinks he does. “He loves you too much.”

Donghyuck’s face, if possible, turns paler. “You aren’t an extension of me,” he says. “At least—say he loves _you_ too much.”

“He loves too much,” Jaemin says, and he might have meant any one of them.

 _Do you love him because you made him,_ swims unbidden to the surface of Jaemin’s mind. _Do you love me because—_

The thought sinks again before it even finishes forming. Donghyuck’s grip on his hands is tight enough to bruise.

“Nothing has to change,” Donghyuck says. He’s looking at Jaemin, but it doesn’t seem like he’s talking to Jaemin. “Everything has to change. I need to…”

“It can wait,” Jaemin says, but they don’t have long before security arrives, the insistent encroachment of the outside world on their spaces. Things can’t keep going like this forever. Something is bound to break. Something has already broken.

There was something else he wanted to say to Donghyuck, but it’s beyond his memory, now. Curls around the empty shape of a name, chalk outline on the pavement like a missing body. It could even be his own.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote most of this while deliriously sick and i think it shows T__T i hope it was still enjoyable though ♡ 
> 
> you can find me on twitter [@juncheolsoo](https://twitter.com/juncheolsoo) / cc [@inheritance](https://curiouscat.me/inheritance)!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Watercolor Memories](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20571821) by [Ivillpunchyouinthethroat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat/pseuds/Ivillpunchyouinthethroat)




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